The environment is one of those areas that shows the truth of Mark Twain's saying that there are "lies, damn lies and statistics". Both sides, all sides, have taken statistics and stretched them to the breaking point. As far as I'm concerned what affects me and my family and friends personally is what matters. When the watershed breaks down because of clear cutting of forests, then I consider that a problem. I don't want pathogens in my water from pig farms or chemicals in my water from fertilizer. I don't care who says that it won't really hurt me, if fish are dying from it, I don't want to drink it.

I don't want to look over the city and see a brown haze. It doesn't matter what it has in it, I don't want to breathe it and I don't want my children or grandchildren (I should ever have any) to breathe it. When I see the Colorado River and it is green (not a pretty green either) from the chemicals in it from being used over and over for irrigation, I am upset that I can't swim in it safely.

The problem with the environment is that it is a commons , and commons are always open to excessive use since everyone wants to make sure that they get theirs. It's hard to regulate what is put into a commons as it is a very expensive process to prove that some farm or factory upstream put chemicals in the water that caused cancer in your child. It's hard to say a company needs to install expensive equipment to protect the air when the cost could mean the loss of jobs. It's hard to say that a lumber company can't cut as many trees when entire towns depend on cutting lots of trees.

Unfortunately, the environment is also an area that has to be a commons. There are natural commons and natural monopolies that we can't really handle on an individual or private sector basis. As a former libertarian and as one that still leans toward the libertarian spectrum, this is a hard point for me. The main reason that I finally changed from being a pure libertarian (whatever that is) is because I realized that there were some things that only a government could do.

As hard as it is to protect the environment, I feel that it is something that is vitally important for us to do. I know we won't protect every species and I will always come down on the side of the human species, but if we make an environment that is decent for human beings, we will have an environment that will support an abundance of animals and plants.

Everyone has their own hot spot when it comes to the environment. A family living near the coast will be more upset by dead fish and garbage showing up on their beach. A family that lives downstream from a clear cut will be more upset by the floods that destroy their home. A family who's groundwater is contaminated by chemicals or pathogens will be more upset by the illnesses they and their neighbors are experiencing. This is an prime area for nimbys.

As part of my belief that the environment is something that we need to protect, I approve of the United States owning public lands, whether they be BLM lands, national forests and national parks. We have so many exquisite treasures and I enjoy knowing that they are protected from being paved over or cut down even if I never get to see them. I also approve of historical national parks as I feel that knowing our history is vital for a nation, but that's another story.

I don't feel that we should never use public lands. There are areas that need to be kept as wilderness and areas that need to be kept free of commercial use such as national parks and designated wilderness areas, but most of our public lands need to be multi use areas. We need to allow the use of national forests by lumber companies and grazing lands by ranchers. We need to meet the needs of campers, both motorhome and motorboat users, and backpackers. If our public lands are properly managed they could help pay for themselves much more than they do now. In order to do this we need to see that fair market prices are charged for lumber and grazing, since we are now practically giving them away. We need to require recreational users to help pay for their use. However, we need to do all this while keeping the environmental protection of the land uppermost in our priorities.

If you want to push my buttons, whine about paying $20.00 to get into the Grand Canyon, for yourself and your family, after you have just dumped a few hundred dollars going to Disneyland. If you consider the Grand Canyon not worth $20.00, don't come. I pay $20.00 just for myself and consider it a bargain. You pay taxes for the national parks because it is a privilege to live in a country that has such wonderful treasures. You pay the entrance fees for the privilege of actually seeing it yourself.

While there is a place for the government owning land, the backbone of good stewardship of the land will always lie with private owners. Any farmer with sense won't destroy his land if he has the knowledge to protect it. Ranchers will protect their land if they are able to; more than they will protect public grazing lands. People who have homes around a lake will do what they can to protect it, if they know what needs to be done.

The common thread in all this is education. We had the dust bowl because farmers came out of an unusually wet century and didn't know how to protect their soil when an extended drought hit. Farmers used to have massive erosion because they didn't know how to keep their soil from washing away. Most of their knowledge came from Europe which had a different climate and much smaller farms and ranches.

We are just now learning how to manage the massive amounts of chemicals that we now produce. I have no desire to go back to the last century as I lived in third world area while growing up and saw how difficult and short lives are without medicine and chemicals and, yes, plastics. I have no desire to live in cities of last century where you waded through liquid manure in the wet weather and breathed clouds of pulverized manure in the dry weather. We do have problems, but I think we can solve them without going back to scratching a living out of the wild.

Of course, there is a real arrogance in thinking that we can actually own and manage land. We will try and sometimes do pretty good, and other times very poorly. Our lack of success in taming the Mississippi is the best example of this. As any farmer will tell you, you don't really own land, it owns you. You just get to do the work. Still, at this point in time, we have no choice but to do what we can to protect the land and the people and animals who live on the land as we are long past the time when we could just let the land heal itself.